Got Metrics? Choose Your Best Option

Are you measuring the success of your marketing campaigns? No matter how beautiful the design or snappy the copy, what is most important is that it gets results. But what does success even look like? “Success” can be defined in many ways. Let’s look at five of the most common ways to determine whether your efforts are working.

1. Response rates: One of the top-line ways to measure success is response rate. How many people took some kind of action — made a phone call, clicked a link, or went to your website? If your marketing goal is brand awareness, the response rate is useful.

2. Conversion rate: Not every phone call, mail piece open, or click-through results in a sale. If you want to measure the effectiveness of your message, conversion rate (the percentage of people who took the desired action) is a more useful measure of success.

3. Dollars per sale: Once someone decides to buy, how much do they spend? This metric can make or break your return on investment. For example, if it costs you $10 to acquire each customer and your average order size is $10, it doesn’t matter if you get a 28% response rate. You still aren’t making money.

4. Customer retention: Profitability doesn’t come in a single sale for many companies. It comes in paid subscriptions, repeat sales, or other forms of recurring revenue. Athletic clubs and automotive clubs are good examples. Here, “success” is dependent on your ability to retain the customers you’ve gained.

5. ROI: All of the above metrics are important, but your overall profitability is determined by considering your total costs, including database management, design, print, and mailing. If your campaign costs you $50,000 and brings in $75,000, your ROI is 50%. If your campaign brought in $110,000 but cost you $100,000, you brought in more money, but the ROI was only 10%.

Which form of measurement is right for you? It depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Are you trying to boost brand awareness? Increase basket sizes? Ensure customer retention? Once you clearly define your goals, you can align those goals with the right measurement tools to get the insight you need.

Best Practices for Great Data

When it comes to marketing, one channel doesn’t reign supreme. All channels work together, and the foundation beneath them is data. Data helps you create relevance, whether you are sending print or email, and is what ties the two channels together. Gather as much data about your audience as possible, regardless of channel, and this data will help make your message richer and more effective.

Here are some best practices to keep in mind:

1. Regularly cleanse and update your contact list. Did you know that nearly 25% of mailing addresses go out of date every year? Use the many tools available to keep your list current. Email requires that you do this more frequently than print since email addresses go out of date much faster.

2. Continually invest in new data to learn more about each recipient. It’s not just addresses that change. People do, too. They may be newly married or newly single; they change life stages, such as having children or entering retirement. Your list needs to keep up with them.

3. Segment your messaging to target your message to different customer groups better. Yes, personalization is an essential element of many marketing campaigns, but you can also create relevance by segmenting your message. Break your audience into buckets, such as “new moms,” “dog owners,” or “college graduates.”

4. Layer on as much personalization as possible. Whether it’s offering products based on a customer’s last purchase or setting a suggested donation level based on their giving history, personalize your message as much as you can. (Hint: This personalization doesn’t always have to be evident to the recipient.)

5. Integrate marketing channels like print, email, and mobile, so they work together. Use the strengths of each channel to boost the other. Sending a mail piece announcing a big sale? Blast an email teaser a few days before, telling them to keep an eye on their mailbox. Or send it a few days after the mailing window to remind them if they missed it.

Need more ideas? Just ask.